


Between The Two Of Us

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [65]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Prison, best enemies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27179770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: In a maximum-security Judoon prison, the Doctor has an unexpected visitor. One who oscillates wildly between gloating, tenderness, and fury; one who has a surprising confession for her...
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: Prompt Fills [65]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/585397
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	Between The Two Of Us

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt:
> 
> _The Master visits 13 in space prison? Set after the finale please._
> 
> This has been sat in my 'Finished' folder for months, figured I should probably post it before Revolution of the Daleks...

The Doctor is, to the best of her abilities, minding her own business. Not that there’s much else to do in the confines of her cell; there’s nothing much to look at out of the window, nothing to read, and nothing to get involved in. She’d tried shouting for the guards and demanding to know her rights, but one of them had merely lashed out at her with a hefty, leather-gauntleted fist and knocked her sideways into the wall, and she can still feel the patch of uncomfortable stickiness along her hairline where the wound is slowly knitting itself back together, blood matted into her hair. It’s longer than she’d like it now; it brushes her shoulders when she turns her head, and she’s taken to tying it back with a length of twine she’d found in an idle pat-down of her pockets, to keep it from getting in her eyes as she paces around her cell.

She could calculate how many laps of the place she’s done, but that piece of maths would only take up approximately 2.46 Earth hours, and she needs something a bit more diverting than that. She’s got a piece of Never-Ending Chalk that she picked up on Saturn a few centuries before – or possibly into the future, she’s never sure – and so she’s started doing calculations on the wall of her cell around the door, where passing guards can’t grow suspicious of her unceasing circular scribbles, Gallifreyan numbers and letters scrawled across the uneven rock in a makeshift approximation of a chalkboard. It passes the time.

She’s halfway into a calculation of the precise amount of artron energy it would take to make some hypothetical improvements to the TARDIS’s performance, and wondering whether it might be worth trying – somehow – to contact River to ask for advice on the equation and on breaking out of prison cells when there’s a soft little _pop_ from behind her, and she turns around to find the Master perched on the end of her bunk. She doesn’t have time to form the words to express that he ought to be dead before he tilts his head to the side, considering the figures, and then casually drawls: “there’s a decimal point in the wrong place. Three lines down, second from the left. Everything after that is wrong.”

She only gapes at him in horror, and he looks at her with abject confusion for a long few seconds before looking down at himself and then back up to her and adding, with a maddening little smirk, “Oh, and I’m not dead.”

“Why aren’t you dead?” the Doctor finally manages, gritting her teeth and trying not to let her voice waiver in the treacherous way it had on Gallifrey. It’s a weak opening line, but it’s also a pressing question; how is it that after everything, he always manages to survive? “You… the Death Particle. How? No one could have survived that. You should have been atomised.”

“Oh, it’s a very long story,” he gets to his feet and gesticulates vaguely, his hair flopping into his eyes as he does so. “Something, something, Gallifreyan safeguards, something, something, Atomic Derandomiser, something, something… all very boring. I won’t waste your time with it, love.”

Something about the final word is so patronisingly condescending that the Doctor clenches her free hand into a fist at her side, nails biting into her palms as she fights the urge to hit him in his stupid, smug face. She knows exactly what he’s referring to, but she’d hoped that with the downfall of her people, the Derandomiser would be unmanned – or unwomaned, whichever – and he would be left in a state of atomic flux for eterntiy. Clearly not.

“And the Cybermen?”

“Slightly less lucky. Not quite Gallifreyan enough to count, apparently. Seems a tad racist, if you ask me, but then you’re not, are you? No, you’re just going to stand there and sulk like the child you are; you’re going to stand there and wonder whether it would’ve put _you_ back together, genetic freak that you are.”

“I’m not,” the Doctor lies, entirely unconvincingly. She has to admit, the thought had crossed her mind; would she have been so lucky? Could she have stood in the Panopticon instead of Ko Sharmus; could she have sacrificed her life and then found herself reassembled? He could have been spared, and she feels a terrible pang of guilt that yet another being has died in her name. “What do you want?”

“To gloat, mainly,” the Master shrugs, his smirk never wavering. “Look at you, in your little cell, trying to find ways to pass the time. That equation will never work, by the way. Apart from the decimal point error, your TARDIS is far too clapped-out for any of that; it’ll fall apart if you try to push it past Warp Speed Nine.”

“It will not,” the Doctor counters, purely out of stubbornness. “Why are you gloating?”

“Oh, seeing you locked up. It’s really quite delicious, you know? Seeing you so powerless and alone; it gives me a little buzz. The great and wonderful Timeless Child. Basis of an entire civilisation, brought to her knees by a deadlock-sealed prison cell. And I know what you’re thinking, by the way; about trying to get hold of your _wife_ ,” he says the word with such disgust and contempt that the Doctor wants to smack him. “But they’ve got a comms dampener surrounding your cell, so don’t even bother. Not that you _could_ contact your little pet anyway, because… well, she’s really quite dead, isn’t she? The last I heard she was a data ghost. How does that work with your love life? Is it hard to take a data ghost to bed?”

The Doctor clenches her jaw and forces herself to remain silent, refusing to rise to the bait.

“Anyway, the thing about data ghosts is that they’re so laughably easy to dele-”

He doesn’t get to the end of his sentence. The Doctor seizes hold of him and backs him against the wall of her cell, one arm pressed against his throat as he laughs breathlessly at her sudden surge of fury.

“Ooh, the kitten has claws,” he manages, but she only presses down all the harder. “Respiratory bypass, love. That won’t get you anywh-”

Her knee comes up and hits him hard in the groin. For a so-called self-identified superior being, his reaction is entirely the same as a human man’s would be; he crumples to the floor, his voice trailing off into a wordless groan of pain.

“Don’t you ever,” the Doctor says, her chest rising and falling as she stands over him with her fists clenched. “Talk about River. Not ever. You do not have that right; you do not have that privilege. You don’t think about her, you don’t talk about her, and you don’t threaten her. I don’t care if you think that in here I’m some soft little kitten without claws; some meek little prisoner who won’t do anything to hurt you. I can still hurt you. I _will_ still hurt you.”

“What…” he manages, looking up at her with a wide-eyed expression of great innocence. “What would… your… friends… think?”

“My friends think I’m dead,” the Doctor spits, her fury of minutes before serving as a useful screen behind which to hide her pain as she considers the fact that, at least in their eyes, she’s dead, or as good as. “So it doesn’t matter what they think of me.”

“We both know… that’s a lie…” the Master struggles to a sitting position, leaning back against the wall and grimacing. “You fight dirty now.”

“When have I ever not?”

“You didn’t used to at the Academy.”

“No, that was your role,” she shrugs casually; watches the barb land and feels a little stab of triumph as his expression flickers. “Maybe I didn’t in a previous life. I wouldn’t know, would I? Thanks to our people, I can never know.”

“Oh, and there’s the beautiful anger,” the Master grins then, his face lighting up with the maliciousness of the expression. “That white-hot passion I lo- so enjoy.”

“Don’t change your mind mid-sentence,” the Doctor raises her eyebrows. “We both know what you were going to say.”

“And we both know that if you say it out loud, I will hurt you.”

“We both know, Koschei, that you couldn’t,” the Doctor says softly, looking down at him with silent sadness. He might play the part; he might talk the talk; but she knows that when it comes down to it he won’t hurt her. he wants her attention; her adulation; her admiration. He wants to know that she thinks he’s wonderful and clever and devious. He doesn’t want to hurt her, not really. Doesn’t want to kill her.

“Don’t call me that,” he snarls, getting unsteadily to his feet and leaning against the wall for support. “That’s not…”

“That’s who you are to me,” she says simply, giving a casual shrug that she knows will particularly irk him. “And always will be.”

“Fine, _Thete,_ ” he says, then inexplicably crumples in on himself, clutching his chest in pain. She can’t help it; her reaction is instinctual and she surges forwards, one hand reaching out for him, and in an instant he’s seized hold of her, pulling her arm hard behind her back and slamming her into the wall. She turns her face to the side quickly enough to avoid her noise slamming into the rock, but her torso bears the full brunt of the impact, and her shoulder screams a protest as he twists her arm higher. “You want to play this game?”

“I don’t want to play this game, no,” she manages, biting down on the yelp of pain that is threatening to bubble from her mouth treacherously. “We haven’t played this rough in years; to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Deviant,” the Master hisses, and she can hear the smirk in his voice. He reaches for her face with his free hand, one finger settling under her chin, but stays out of her field of vision; watching her, taking the measure of her. She dislikes that; dislikes the fact that she can’t see him, and she’s considering trying to shift a little when his fingers skim upwards and settle beside the matted injury that is half-hidden by her hair.

“Who did this?” he asks in a low, dangerous voice, his entire demeanour changing. “What happened?”

“Just one of the guards.”

“Did they hurt you anywhere else?” he demands to know, his tone urgent. “Did they touch you?”

“No, they just… they just knocked me into the wall. That’s all. It looks worse than it is.”

“It looks bad,” he says, and there’s a softness to his voice that takes her by surprise. “It looks like it hurts.”

“You know what else hurts?” she chances. “You trying to dislocate my arm.”

“Oh,” he murmurs, as though he’d forgotten, and he lets go of her briefly, allowing her to turn around before gently taking hold of the shoulder he hadn’t been twisting and guiding her into the meagre glow cast by the overhead light fixture.

“What are you…” she asks, but he only ignores her, pushing her hair back with a gentle hand and hissing quietly at the sight of the long, congealed cut.

“Why didn’t you use the sonic on it?” he wonders, gently touching the very edge of the injury. “It would’ve helped.”

“I did. It wouldn’t stay closed. It needs stitching or a plaster, but fairly obviously, I don’t-”

The Master fumbles through his pockets and comes up with a small box of… well, something. The packaging is too faded to make out the words, but he opens the container up to reveal a tiny first aid kit, snowy white against the grime and dirt of her cell.

“Why do you…”

“In case of emergencies,” he says, aiming for levity but falling somewhat short; the concern in his tone bleeding through. “Seems a shame to waste regeneration energy on a graze, doesn’t it?”

“You’re not using that on me.”

“What, do you think I’ve got soporific wipes? Grenade plasters?” he snaps. “Don’t be absurd.”

“You might,” she levels, trying to take a step away from him, but his fingers wrap around her wrist and he guides her firmly but gently to her bunk and then indicates that she should sit. She hesitates for a moment, and then complies reluctantly, her entire body tensed and ready to run at the slightest provocation. Run _where_ she doesn’t know, but she readies herself, nonetheless.

“I’m not letting you ruin that pretty face with a scar.”

“You do know you said that out loud?” the Doctor asks. “Really, really out lou-OW.”

She flinches as an antiseptic wipe is wiped slowly over the cut, letting out a long hiss of complaint.

“So what if I did?” he murmurs, concentrating on the task at hand and continuing to clean the injury. “No one here but us to hear it. And it _is_ a pretty face.”

“You think all my faces are pretty.”

“And you think all of mine are,” the Master reasons, then frowns. “Well, except perhaps when you found me on Tersurus, or at the Traken Union.”

The Doctor, against her better judgement, smiles fondly at the memory. “You have a point.”

“You weren’t supposed to agree,” the Master chides, discarding the wipe and reaching for a tiny box of butterfly stitches, peeling one off and applying it carefully to the wound. “How does that feel?”

“Sticky.”

“That’s the idea,” he shakes his head in exasperation, continuing to apply them until she bears five in a neat little row, and the cut feels tingly and newly-sore after the ministrations. This is a new kind of discomfort; this kind hints at the prospect of healing, rather than the dull, lingering ache that had previously been the case. “After all that I did for those creatures… they do this.”

“What do you mean?” the Doctor asks as she packs his miniature first aid kit back up and stashes it in a pocket. “What did you do for them?”

“Oh, please. Like those halfwits could have got into your TARDIS on their own.”

“That was…” she blinks hard, unsettled by his easy shift in mood. “That was you?”

“Well, they had to arrest you somehow. And you do look so especially wonderful behind bars.”

“I’m in here because of you?” she repeats, frowning and then wincing as the action tugs at her injury. The stark contrast between the gentle, careful treatment of her cut and now the admission of such a betrayal is jarring, and she feels abruptly sick to realise that her imprisonment is the fault of her oldest friend. “This is your doing?”

“Well, yeah,” he says, as though it ought to be obvious. Perhaps it should have been. “Has to be said, I am really enjoying it. You look good all grimy and raw and wild.”

“And bleeding.”

He flinches at that; his eyes drawn back to her hairline. “Don’t.”

“Why? Why shouldn’t I mention that the guards in the prison you’ve put me in have a penchant for being heavy-handed?”

“Don’t,” he says again, closing his eyes and holding up a hand warningly. “Just… don’t.”

“What, does that not fit with your view of the place? I thought you spent the twentieth century in prisons; I thought you knew what they were like. Guards don’t treat prisoners with respect. Guards don’t even see them as people or beings; they just see something they can mistreat and laugh at, because no one will care. You knew that – you _know_ that – and yet still you put me in here; still you put me in here and then when you turn up to gloat and you find out I’m injured, you’re what? Personally offended? Shocked? Surprised? You’re stupider than you look, then.”

“Don’t!” he roars, his eyes snapping open and his hands twitch as though he’s thinking of lunging for her again, but he contains himself with tangible effort. “Don’t… don’t, not after everything. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

“You mean everything you put me through on Gallifrey?”

“Also that,” he snarls. “But after everything… after finding out that all I am is you, and everything I am is thanks to you… I just wanted some peace. I wanted to be rid of you. And I thought – stupidly and naively – that dying would be the end of it. If I was dead, I couldn’t be the second-best Time Lord in the universe… second best out of two, which is just a glorified way of saying last. I thought that in death, I could finally be myself; I could finally be free of the pervasive, sickening impact you’ve had on my life. But I wasn’t allowed to die. I wasn’t allowed to be free; I was doomed to spend forever stuck in this body with these genetics that I never asked for; these genetics that were spliced into me from you, and this damned ability to regenerate that was stolen from you against your consent. So my only hope for some peace was this: your imprisonment.”

“Wow,” the Doctor deadpans, forcing herself to keep her expression and tone neutral. The confession of the urge to die ought to surprise her, but it doesn’t; she’d heard the Master say so before aboard the _Valiant_ , and while it still makes her hearts ache in her chest, she knows the Master well enough to understand that his every action is motivated by spite for her. “That almost makes it sound like you care.”

“Of course I care,” the Master snaps. “Of course I care that you were a child – a _child_ – and your _mother_ did those things to you. She stole you and she did experiments on you like you were a test subject, like you weren’t conscious and in pain. And do you know the worst of it? Do you want to know the true, ghastly depravity of it? Do you want to talk about the elephant in the room?”

“No,” the Doctor says at once, because she knows what he’s referring to, and to face up to it would be to make it real. “No, I don’t.”

“Well, let’s face it,” the Master continues, his voice manic. “You weren’t regenerating naturally. You weren’t just going through that many lifecycles naturally. Oh no. Oh, no, no. In the Matrix, I watched her kill you. Time and time again, I watched her do it. So many times; so many deaths. Even when she thought she was being kind, she wasn’t, because if she was being kind she’d have let you go. Let you be. She’d have stopped it all and simply allowed you to live your life. But instead she was harming you over and over and over again, all in the name of science.”

The Doctor shakes her head hard. “No,” she says quietly. “No, no, she wouldn’t…”

“Do you know, that even with my whole plan laid out how it was, I couldn’t make you watch that? The footage is gone. You didn’t need to see her slipping a knife between your ribs while you slept, or putting a pillow over your face, or poisoning your morning chai. You didn’t need that image. The image you _do_ need is that I killed her last. Not that she was a she by then – all that depravity and coldness had made her so cruel and power crazed that her body decided she ought to be a man. But I found him. I found him, and I made sure he watched our people die first; that he knew what was coming for him. And then…” his voice drops to a whisper. “Then I made sure I really, really hurt him. He screamed. Oh, how he screamed and he begged for mercy. He howled and wailed and bled and bled and bled, and he kept saying your name. Over and over and over, like a prayer. I think he was sorry; I think he wanted you to know that he was sorry, like that would help. Like if you knew, I wouldn’t kill him. But I did. I kicked him from the top of the Citadel, and oh, the sound of him falling. Oh, it was like music. The scream, the scream, the scream, and then the silence. It gave me chills. It made me so, _so_ happy.”

The Doctor shivers. “And are you happy now?” she asks quietly. “Seeing me in here? Knowing that it’s your fault?”

The Master thinks for a moment. “Deliriously,” he says with a cheerful smile, and then there’s a _pop_ and he’s gone.


End file.
